Okay, taken over from the CC Random Speculation thread, on Schreck's suggestion.
HerrSchreck wrote:Red Shoes, Blimp, IKWIG, Canterbury Tale... some of the finest DVDs out there. I'm sure Stairway won't disappoint.
I guess you must have been too blown away by IKWIG (who wouldn't?) to notice that this disc clearly isn't 'one of the finest dvds out there'. Dirt and speckles aside, a lot of chroma noise and other artefacting. I really wish they'd re-do this one, as the extras blow away any other edition of the film. But the image, sadly, doesn't.
The prospect of "A matter of life and death" on CC is great, of course. One of their most charming and immediately accessible films. A film for all ages and tastes, I'd say (whereas I could imagine that there are viewers who don't get excited over "Canterbury Tale" because of the 'lack of action'). I found the courtroom scene a little contrived and too didactic, too, but for me, the mise-en-scene manages to save it. There are precedents for this, of course, Lang's "Liliom" being the most obvious, but it's all handled with a typical ingenuity and inventiveness that clearly shows that Powell had done parts of "Thief of Bagdad" before.